I’ll be back soon!

Cheers,

Sabs

Here are some of the highlights of every month (whatever I can remember!!):

January: The year started off in Goa listening to a fake ABBA group playing at the Butter Lounge! LOL! The otherwise awesome New Years’ Goa trip with Sanju, Adi and Sandy was just after an equally awesome 8 day trip to Sri Lanka for Christmas with Pomchi!

I also got my Digital SLR camera – the Canon EOS 400D and I freaked out with it at the Lalbagh Flower Show!!

February: We had the biggest and best Perot Systems annual day ‘Perotsav’ till date in our campus. I was part of the core committee for the event and was very happy with the final execution. Kunal Ganjawala and Anushka Manchanda performed for the event and totally rocked the evening!

My dance classes at Swingers in Indiranagar culminated with a grand show at St. John’s auditorium, which I unfortunately could not be a part of thanks to being busy with Perotsav preparations.

I went with the entire team from my previous PHH Mortgage project on a day outing to Club Cabana.

I also got to attend an all night music event called the Fireflies Festival of Music held in the outskirts of Bangalore. The ambiance was superb and the various music groups representing different genres of music from India and around the world were brilliant and I totally enjoyed the event with Tejas and Sharath.

March: Went on a trip to Dandeli and Karwar with the Microsoft “J” gang! Had awesome fun rafting on the Kali river and camping at an island resort off Karwar with Sunil, Ranga, Raghavan, Ankith and Sreenath.

April: Went on a trip with mom to Mangalore to attend a family friend’s wedding and to Kerala to meet grand parents in Pallakkad and to attend the festival at the Rama temple in Tellichery.

I also got an awesome In Car Entertainment (ICE) setup in my car with a Pioneer DEH- 6050 head unit with JBL GT5-650C Components in front and JBL GT5-963 speakers in the rear.

May: At work I got selected for a new project in the BPM team, which required me to travel to the Noida campus for a Knowledge Transfer (KT) session. I stayed in Noida for over a month and used all the free time I could get to explore Delhi and Noida and several other cities and do a lot of things, including seeing the Taj Mahal at Agra, visiting Fatehpur Sikhri, River rafting at Rishikesh, bathing in the Ganges at Haridwar, seeing the Golden Temple at Amritsar and the Flag ceremony at the Indo-Pak Wagah Border, over the weekends. I saw a lot of great places and met several old friends (Animesh, Sayor, Nethra, Shobith and others)  and made many new ones (extended farmhouse gang). I really loved Delhi and its culture and monuments and markets and would love to go back and spend more time there sometime.

June: Returned from Noida and was generally busy learning and working on the new project.

July: This was a month of weddings and two of my closest friends got married. Roohi got married in Bangalore and Mehmood’s wedding took place in Pune.

A few of us from office (Vishnu, Anil Sir, Nagaraj Bhatt and myself) went for Mehmood’s wedding in Pune and had an awesome time there with Pawan and his roommate Piyush. We explored and partied in Pune and also went to Lonavala and Khandala and just about made it to the wedding!

I also went on a day outing to Anthargange with the extended farmhouse gang that I met in May in New Delhi.

August: This was my Birthday month and I turned a quarter of a century old! The whole month was one big party! I had a whole load of friends to treat and every other day was meeting a different gang!

September: This was the month of Festivals galore! Ganesh Chaturthi, Kolu and Onam meant a lot of visitors to home and a lot of visits to other homes. Not to forget a lot of sweets and delicacies!

October: I went to Chennai to write my GRE and TOEFL and although didn’t do all that great in the GRE, it was a great learning experience. The exam was good fun and studying for an exam after so many years of working was quite a challenge!!

November: Spent a lot of time researching on universities and working on my applications for higher studies. This was also the month of the terrible terrorist attacks in Mumbai, which was the most intense attack on India in a year that was filled with bomb blasts and mindless terror.

December: Went on a religious visit to Palakkad in Kerala with parents, sister, brother-in-law and nephew. Went to a lot of temples and met grand-parents as well.

December also saw a lot of parties (birthdays and general) and an outing to Wonder La! It all culminated in a farmhouse party at a friends place on New Years eve!

To sum things up 2008 was a decent year! I continued to make a lot of new friends and got some really close ones. A lot of friends either got engaged or married. I travelled quite a bit as usual and had my fair share of fun and adventure! Financially it was not that great a year. The stock market crash and the recession that has set in all over ensured my net-worth dropped considerably in the mayhem! Gadget wise it was all about my new car music system and ofcourse the dSLR camera for which I added quite a few accessories through the year! Work-wise I got to do a lot of great stuff and hope to do better this year.

Looking forward to a different and better 2009! Although the start is not all that great with the recession affecting us all in different ways.

Nonetheless, Happy New Year!

I got the following image as part of a New Year greeting talking about being the change we wish to see and making a New Years resolution to try and do our bit for the environment and taking a stand on this issue. The image highlights some of the things we could do.

On this note, I wish you all a very happy, prosperous, safe, and not to forget cleaner and greener New Year 2009!

This is so true and so me! :D

Finally we got fed up of waiting and after 9 months of no connectivity at home, we decided to go for an Airtel connection and within 2 days of calling them, they installed the phone and set up the broadband connection today. So now I can finally surf from home and get around to blogging more frequently and uploading more pictures and of course catching up on all the blogs and groups and forums and what not!

Yay!

Afternoon Siesta

Anyway, Its only been 6 days here in Noida/Delhi and its been good so far! I’ve been going around and seeing a lot of new places, and met some old friends after ages and also made some new ones on this trip!

On my first day here last Thursday I met Animesh, who took me to Noida’s Sector 18, where all the malls and shopping and food places are and we had a great evening checking out different places and eating yummy road side food and getting a good experience of Noida’s night life (which does tend to die down rather quickly though!!)

Animesh at a chaat stall

Then on friday I met Animesh again along with another old friend from my Microsoft Academia days, Sayor and we went to Delhi – first to this place called New Friends Colony community centre for some great Dilli Chaat and later to Khan market for dinner at Chunas.

With Sayor in Khan market

The whole market/community centre concept to hang out at is really nice and comes with a good mix of old and new shops, eateries and modern cafes, books and gadgets, corridors and narrow lanes and lots of people! I havent seen any similar areas in Bangalore to hang out at. Delhi is filled with places like this as I discover over the next few days!

A view of NFC Community Centre

Saturday morning I went to more ‘markets’ – the M Block and N Block markets in GK 1 – with Badri’s sister, Nethra. She took me to a great place for lunch (Cafe Turtle), which had some good pasta and a nice ambience as it was in a book store. As Niti said of the place, it was very comforting being surrounded by books!

Saturday was a long day (and night) – after lunch Niti and I went to Humayun’s tomb [more in seperate post] and in the evening I met more friends who took me to Connaught Place (CP) and then to India Gate for some awesome Kala Katta Chusti and finally dinner at a restaurant in Pindara road!

Sunday was relatively lazy in the morning and in the evening I went to Delhi’s Sarita nagar, from where we went to Dilli Haat along with Niti, which is this government run bazaar kinda place with food stalls from every state in the country and a lot of interesting handlooms and handicraft items to shop.

All in all a great start to my Noida/Delhi trip!!

I got 2 lenses along with the dSLR -

1. Canon EF 50 mm f/1.8 II – This prime lens is amazing at portraits and colours and is very sharp.

2. Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8 DC – This will be my main walk around lens.

I am currently enjoying playing around and experimenting with the camera and the lenses. I have a lot to learn now that I’ve upgraded to a dSLR and I’m super excited!

Being a Canon fan, I had no doubts as to which camera I was going to get. The camera feels just right in my hands and is easy to operate. 

Keep watching my photoblog for more updates and photos with the new camera and lens!

This fest will always be one of my fondest memories of college days. Along with Harish (Gunda), Sashi, Manohar, Vinay Kharade and several others, I was responsible for conceiving, planning and organising the very first fest at NMIT. I am proud to say that even the name of the fest was given by me! :)

Being a fan of Indian myth and epic, it was only natural for me to dive into that ocean to look for a name. While several options came up, I selected this, as it literally means ‘without beginning or end’. Creativity and talent has no limits and that was the idea behind choosing the name. Anaadyanta is also a name given to Lord Shiva.

We had some amazing moments in planning and organising this fest. Since we had nothing to base the fest upon (being the very first fest), we had to do everything from scratch and it was no easy task.

We had some amazing moments trying to convince the management about everything, right from serious issues to trivial issues. Be it the actual fest itself to issues like stage height or about calling a rock band (we eventually called Moksha!) or event list or prize money. Everything was under scrutiny and nothing was spared! We were constantly questioned. We proposed, they opposed! Ultimately after a lot of discussions and arguments they agreed to most of our demands and we agreed to most of theirs and went ahead with the fest!

Also we had extremely limited budgets (the management wasn’t sure if the fest will become a hit or if it was worth spending so much money which could be used elsewhere, considering ours was a new college). Getting sponsors was a huge task, as nobody was ready to invest without knowing what returns on investment they will get and hardly anybody had even heard of the college then!

Harish, Sashi and I spent countless hours together covering countless kilometres to countless companies, talking about the fest and asking for sponsorship and support. Not everyone was forthcoming, infact no one was! Some were even rude and left us embarrassed! Finally we managed to get some sponsors, who though didn’t invest in large amounts, somehow contributed to the fest!

At several moments during the planning stages, we weren’t sure if the fest was going to be a reality. We had a lot of barriers to cross and a lot of discouragement to counter. Finally when everything was finalized, we even had a postponement to deal with, thanks to some issue at college! And a day before the original fest date, we called up colleges to inform them of the change in dates!! But somehow we saw it through!

Most of the time Harish, Sashi and myself were together during the planning for this fest.

There are some moments that we will never forget, such as -

Getting our first poster printed. It was more of a teaser, to be put up in our own college, breaking the event and hyping it amongst our own students first! That night at Rajajinagar, when we got the printed posters in our hands, we were all extremely emotional and it was Just the beginning! Even when we got the other main posters and literature printed later, we had the same feelings of delight!

All the hours sitting at Pizza Hut in Sadashivnagar and Coffee Day in Malleshwaram planning and thinking and replanning and brainstorming and sharing one glass of unlimited Pepsi by three!!

The drive back from visiting some sponsor when I braked suddenly in traffic to avoid banging into a scooter that suddenly came in our path. The scooter guy panicked on hearing my car screech and banged into the car in front (both in an extremely funny way!) When the car driver came out to shout at the scooter guy, he started pointing at us while we were laughing our heads off! Finally the signal turned green and everyone moved on. None of us can forget that moment!

The very first sound check in campus! The guys from Audio Touch were able to set up the speakers and sound system at something like 3 AM after a lot of trouble with the stage guys. The Audio Touch guys turned on the speakers in full blast and played Hotel California! I can never forget that moment, in the middle of the night, standing on our stage for our very first Anaadyanta, after months of planning and hard work and uncertainty, listening to that amazing song by The Eagles. When this first sound check happened all the hostelites and other students who were still on campus all freaked out and came running to the venue, to celebrate. Anaadyanta was here and how!

Realising Gunda had given the stage backdrop guys the spelling of the fest name, wrongly as “Anaadynata”, when they put up the backdrop on the morning of the fest! We then corrected the mistake by cutting out the ‘n’ and the ‘a’ and interchanging them to form “Anaadyanta”!

All our experiences with our college dean, Mr. N.R. Shetty and with our inimitable fest coordinator, Mr. Natarajan! We always had to have extra print outs of every document ready!

And last but not the least, how can I forget “Whose Father What Goes?!” :D

Ultimately Anaadyanta ‘04 was a great fest with huge participation from several colleges, including the top colleges of that time. The fest was a resounding success and everybody and everything came together over the last few days and all the various committees did their best to put up a great show!

The reason this blog post came up, is because I got all nostalgic after seeing the new core committee go all out in conducting Anaadyanta ‘08. It was held recently and they even came up with an Anaadyanta theme music and a dance performance based on the theme music!

Enjoy the video and the Anaadyanta theme!

Music composed and arranged by : Skanda
Vocals: Suchetan R , Sushruth
Dance by: Preetham and group

This is a very proud moment for me and my fellow Anaadyanta core committee members!

Btw for all that we did to create Anaadyanta – we guys from the first core committee were rewarded with a cup of coffee and some biscuits in the Principal’s office. It was the most satisfying cup of coffee we’d ever had! :)

I can’t believe I have been away for so long from the blogosphere.

Well there are a couple of reasons for it -

I shifted my house in October 2007, and the darned BSNL phone line is still under shift! Highly inefficient morons. They keep telling us some cable needs to be layed near our apartment and that they will do it tomorrow, the next week, next month…never. As a result of this I have no internet at home. Aaargh – I cant belive it more than 5 months without internet!! And thinking that these morons will come soon, I didnt apply for any other internet connection either. Plus there is nothing that quite matches the package of BSNL (if only they set it up!)

The Bad Behaviour plugin that I have installed in Wordpress, was so good – it prevented me from logging into my own site from any cyber cafe or IP addresses that were known to be compromised. Even at work I was blocked from logging in.

As a result of all this I ended up not being able to blog and as the work load at office increased, didnt have time to check up on it further.

I finally found some work around to upgrade Bad Behaviour to a newer version, which is known to be better at judging good and bad IPs. And now I am able to log in from some locations!

I have tons to blog about! Many trips, many photos, many changes! As and when I find a clean IP that I can log in from, I shall blog. But once the internet is setup at home, I should be back to being more regular.

Aloha once again!